The Five Strands of Reading Education

The Logic of English approach teaches the five strands of reading identified by the National Reading Panel. The five strands are interwoven with handwriting, spelling, grammar, and composition to create a truly complete language arts program.

Students must understand that words are made of sounds and recognize that sounds combine into words in order to read successfully. Logic of English places a strong emphasis on developing students’ phonemic awareness, kinesthetically as well as auditorily, in preparation for reading.

We teach students all the sounds made by each phonogram, as well as logical, accurate spelling rules that give real answers to questions about English. Armed with 74 basic phonograms and 30 spelling rules, Logic of English students have the tools to decode 98% of the more than two million English words.

Logic of English materials teach students about morphology as well as spelling. Learning about roots and affixes gives students tools to expand their vocabulary efficiently, rather than through rote memorization, and successfully infer meanings of new words.

Logic of English students increase fluency through extensive reading practice while also learning why each word is spelled the way it is. We teach high frequency words in the context of systematically taught spelling rules and provide a variety of engaging fluency activities and games.

The Logic of English differs from many systematic phonics programs in placing a strong emphasis on reading comprehension and critical thinking. From the early levels of both Foundations and Essentials, students think about the meaning of what they read. The emphasis shifts increasingly towards comprehension as students progress through the curriculum, enabling students to bridge successfully from learning to read to reading to learn.

To learn more about the Five Strands, check out this short presentation by Logic of English author Denise Eide on our YouTube channel: The Five Strands of Reading.